I wake up with my cheek pressed tight to the soft cotton stretched across my uncle's broad chest. One of his hands is tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck and the other has migrated around my waist. My hands are curled, one at his Adam's apple and the other over the glide of his shoulder blade. Our legs are clumsily intertwined.
I rub my nose gently against his heart, hearing the solid steady thump of that sturdy organ. He smells like the garden, like soft silt and the grit of stone, fresh and green and pleasantly dirty.
A grown rumbles from his throat like thunder, and he shifts to cradle me closer. I lay my ear to the center of his chest, to listen to the sound of his body waking up, the increased pulse and breath, subtle tensing and movement of his hands.
"What do you want to do today?" his voice rasps with the vestiges of sleep.
I shake my head, burrowing further into him, and he sighs out a gentle chuckle.
"We have to get up some time," he reasons.
"No, we don't," I declare gruffly.
"Okay, we don't," he concedes.
A silence passes. He cards his finger through my hair, his blunted nails dragging along my scalp and leaving pleasured sparks to race down my shoulders. He runs hot, I realize, but then so do I.
"How did it make you feel?" he asks quietly but surely, not afraid to hear the answer.
"Like a chain snapped. A weak chain," I admit.
"A confining chain," he clarifies
"In a manner of speaking."
"It was easy," he concludes.
"It was a weak chain," I reiterate.
"Of course."
"I cannot forgive you"
"For your mother?" He sounds flabbergasted.
"For my father." I pull away completely, sitting up.
His features collapse in concern, almost into betrayal. "Are you going to leave me?"
"If I was planning on doing that, I would have shot you and not my mother," I explain.
"We are still leaving together?"
"Yes."
"But, you cannot forgive me?"
"Yes."
"Then – ".
"I am angry with you."
"But, you still want – ".
"Yes."
He smiles that giddy boyish grin with the odd showing of teeth.
The pale blue light of morning is coming in through the window. I can see the fog in the trees.
"Let's play a game before breakfast."
He perks up, intrigued. "What game? One I know?"
"One everybody knows. Hide and seek."
His grin is contagious. "Limits?"
"The train tracks."
"You hide first."
"Count to fifty slowly."
"One Mississippi."
I lift his hands and place them over his eyes. "No peeking." His smile bursts like a star.
It is easy to meld into the scenery, curled within the knotted roots of a tree. Nature doesn't hesitate to swallow you up. Yet even as my body dissolves into the wood and the soil and the green, my surroundings remain in sharp relief. From the pitch of the wind whistling through the leaves to the infinite trail of ants to the tip tops of the trees.
Each animal makes a distinct noise as it moves through the woods. Even with my eyes closed, I can determine its identity by the sound of its path – the erratic skittering and halting of squirrels and the crinkling crawl of beetles, the cheer of the robin at dawn compared to the jeering of blue birds. The most subtle of sounds belongs exclusively to the doe, the animal that treads so lightly and kindly along the forest floor, careful of every snap and crunch. It is the quiet, gentle doe I endeavor for, so aware, conscious of itself almost like a human would be. And, human beings always make the best prey, the most dangerous game.
I lay my head on the soft forest floor, pressing my cheek to the litter of decomposing maple leaves. The steps of the doe go unnoticed. I close my eyes and listen closer. Thunder rolls overhead, sending vibrations through the air and into the ground. A train of single file ants crawls up and over my ankles without a second thought, flowing in and out of the woodwork as if I were not there.
He is a presence before he is a sound, but he doesn't need to be the quiet one.
As he passes behind the tree, I feel a cool breath on my face and open my eyes to stare into the dilated centers of my mother's dead gaze, the icy blue of her eyes lost to her pupils. A final agonal gasp wafts across my brow, displacing eye lashes and the fine hairs across my cheeks, smelling like summer wine. I think about her lips on those of my uncle's, how she closed her eyes in a disingenuous show of passion long left dormant, how her hands clung to his clean shaven jaw line like she was playing a part. And through the curtains, his eyes never left mine, the image of me locked into his mind while he clumsily laid his lips over those of my mother's.
I crawl out from under the hollow of the tree and take off barefoot deeper into the woods. The delicate pat of my feet across the forest floor resembles the doe, and the ensuing chase of my uncle's heavier footsteps is akin to the padding of a wolf. The thin silk straps of my gown are light across my shoulders and the ground is soft and forgiving under my feet. The thunder roars intermittently with the sound of my uncle's feet. Hurdling fallen tree trunks and temporary creeks, slip sliding across river rock and dodging stray branches, until I hit gravel and the rusting train tracks and dart along the edge of the woods along our previously determined boundary. My uncle's pursuit never loses pace. I debate moving for higher ground, wondering if he would follow me to the tops of the trees, follow me down the steep edge of a rocky waterfall into uncertain depths, follow me past the reaches of antiquated Stoker manor and the shallow graves marked by playful stone spheres, follow me into the visceral red that lines our minds.
A surprised gasp is forced out of me as his hand closes around a fistful of silk, and I hear the fragile fabric give a little bit away when he swings me around, my back crashing against an ancient oak. I throw my hands up to shove him away, but he slaps vices around my wrists and holds me there. Violence permeates us. The rapid succession of labored breaths between us creates a pocket of heated, humid air. A flash of lightning appears behind his head for a brief second, and I see the sweat dripping down his temples, beading on the tip of his nose and chin. His cheeks are dimpled and flushed around the crooked, boyish smile, and he looks like a child, looks so young, looks anew.
"I caught you."
He studies the progression of sweat drops down the length of my neck for a moment, one of the straps of my night gown torn but my heaving bust protecting my modesty. His pupils are blown, and I know my own are an exact reflection. He leans down to press his forehead just under my chin, sweat against sweat. He can play the part with my mother, but he would only voluntarily touch me. His breath is cool across my clavicle, down the center of my chest.
I can see a train passing in the distance, through the infinite branches, hear the rattle of the tracks and the screeching of the railroad switch. His hands tighten around my wrists, pulling my arms around him in a forced embrace. And his nose knocks my chin on the way up when he presses his lips to mine, keeping his eyes open to gauge my reaction.
I let Whip kiss me first because he let my mother do the same.
It is both a reflex and an aware decision when my canine nicks his lower lip, but unlike the morbidly curious and underwhelming Whip, my uncle returns the favor, his equally sharp tooth sinking into my bottom lip. He lets me go to wrap me up in his arms, and feeling the extent of his touch all over me is a shock to my senses, the width of his hands, the strength and fervor in his hold. I hesitantly place a hand on the back of his head, the grading of the hair from nape to crown. My other hand feels along the damp white t-shirt, the glide of his shoulder blade, the tension in the muscles along his back. Blood mingles as the visceral red in our minds bleed into one another, and his tongue is in my mouth and he tastes like iron and cuts and bruises. Our eyes slide closed together, because I would rather feel it than see it at this point, and I know this unfamiliar and subconscious fury does not resemble the disingenuous passions he concocted for my mother. The thought alone makes my grip in his hair intensify, ruining his perfect arrangement, making him messy, spoiling his act. I think chaos in the cacophony of clattering trains and growling thunder and the rushing breaths between us, anticipating an even bigger bang on the way.
He breaks away suddenly to rain kisses across my face, somehow gracious and appreciative, the trail of pecks ending on my mouth once more.
I cannot bring myself to pull away.
